Cinema Showdown

Bjork's strange concert film and more

If you're a Bjork fan, you won't want to miss Exploded View's screening on Friday, Nov. 7 of "Biophilia Live," a recording of her live show at London's Alexandra Palace in 2013 by Nick Fenton and Peter Strickland. Bjork's work has always included a focus on the visual as well, probably not more so than on her eighth album, which was also released as a series of apps and the film reflects that adventurousness, falling somewhere between concert film and an avant-garde art piece about nature. There are only 40 available first-come-first-serve seats for the showing, so you might want to get there a bit before the 7:30 p.m. time on the schedule. Tickets are $10 and you can get more info at explodedviewgallery.org.

While the movie-going situation here in Tucson does seem to get a bit better all the time, we're still a little slow to get some movies, so while the big city folks have been raving about "Dear White People" for a few weeks, we've had to be patient. Thankfully, we only have to wait until Nov. 7, since the satire of race-relations in modern America opens at the Loft that week (along with "The Tale of Princess Kaguya," the Daniel Radcliffe horror film "Horns" and the documentary "Last Days in Vietnam"). We'll have a review next week, I believe, but when New York Magazine is calling a film "one of the best feature-filmmaking debuts of recent years" and compares the director, Justin Simien to Spike Lee, Stanley Kubrick and Jean-Luc Godard, that seems like a recipe for a film I need to see.

Looking less into the future, the Loft has some options appropriate for Halloween this week, including a screening of England's National Theatre's production of "Frankenstein" starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller (Thursday, Oct. 30 and Sunday, Nov. 2), the Bruce Campbell classic "Evil Dead 2" (Friday, Oct. 31 and Saturday, Nov. 1), a Rocky Horror Halloween event, an opportunity to see "Beetlejuice" (Friday, Oct. 31, including "Trunk or Treating" and a costume contest) and the horror anthology "The ABCs of Death 2" (opening Friday, Oct. 31). Plus, some options that have nothing to do with Halloween at all. More info at loftcinema.com.

I guess this is connected to Cyclovia somehow, but the Fox is showing the Kevin Bacon bicycle messenger film "Quicksilver" on Saturday, Nov. 1. The movie reeks of the '80s (Bacon plays a former stock broker who lost his nerve for the fastpaced business world and instead becomes a wise bike messenger who ends up wrapped up in a world of intrigue) and is deeply inspired by the early days of MTV, but as long as you can get past that stuff and the "wait, what?" of the ending, it's a fun ride. Tickets for the 7:30 p.m. showing are $7, $5 if you qualify as a senior, student or active-duty military. More info at foxtucsontheatre.com.

A quick note: we wrote about Roadhouse Cinema's free movie Thursdays last week, but they've shifted the free films to Tuesdays from now on to accommodate the movie studios and their new releases. If you head to their website (roadhousecinemas.com), you can vote for the films to be screened in November for "Tough Guy Tuesday." My vote's for "The Dirty Dozen," if anyone cares.